Although I rarely make political commentary on this blog, it’s hard not to sometimes. I’m trying to figure out what the fuck Barack Obama was thinking when he chose Alan Simpson to lead a deficit commission. Alan Simpson’s brain is in deficit mode and he can’t balance jack shit. He’s a dickwad of the worst magnitude. But, then again, I have to admit I spend most of my time wondering WTF Barack Obama is thinking anyway. I am not impressed on any front. But be of good cheer people! I can help Alan Simpson with Social Security because I have much first-hand experience with that totally ineffective bloated government bureaucracy.

Alan Simpson was wrong to call it a ” milk cow with 310 million tits.” No sir. If it was indeed a milk cow with 310 million tits, the Social Security Administration might be considered a helpful and productive government organization. It is not. In fact, it is the exact opposite of that. It is, simply put, the most unhelpful, confused, poorly run, and slovenly staffed government bureaucracy on the fucking planet. And I’m convinced that their only reason for being is to frustrate the American public land cheat it out of as much money as it possibly can.

Nope. I’m not worried that the employees of SSA might read this. In fact, I’m pretty sure that they can’t read at all. And, even if they can (and this is a long shot, folks), I’m sure they wouldn’t be reading this fucking blog.

Punching my ticket for Cirque de SSA

Now, I’m not going to comment in great detail on how I came to be intimately involved with SSA since March of this year because I’m not at liberty to discuss that bullshit yet (but just wait until I can). It’s enough for you all to know that both of my children are receiving payments from SSA and that they are deserving of those payments. I’m not going to reveal why in the interest of protecting their privacy. What I will tell you is that the real circus started with a simple address change.

I moved about a week before the first of July. At the time, my living arrangement with my children was temporary, and an opportunity for us to move kind of fell in my lap. Knowing what kind of trauma this might cause SSA with such short notice, I moved and made arrangements with my landlord to pick up the kids’ checks the next week. That went very smoothly. I then made a formal address change for the August checks.

And I didn’t just make the address change on the web. I called the local office I’d visited five times in the past month for other issues and made the change over the phone. I then faxed them a copy of my new lease, which I know they received because I called to make sure it was received. I was assured by an SSA employee that “everything was in order” for August checks. But just to be sure, I went and opened two direct deposit custodial accounts for my children and provided SSA with that information as well. This was done in plenty of time. I also went online with the postal service and did my forwarding mail duty. For this little service, they charged my bank account a buck. Must work. I felt pretty good on July 6. Yes sir. How could anything possibly go wrong?

Oh, let me count the ways, people. I guess two experiences, one in May and one in June should have set the red flags waving. In may, SSA mailed one check correctly to me. The other, however, was mailed to someone who should not have received it. Let’s just say that it’s almost September and I don’t have a replacement check for that one yet. No sir. Wouldn’t want to be too efficient. Now, I’d already spent five days in that particular office talking with at least five people, including two supervisors, between the months of March through June. They had paperwork up the butthole, like court documents, adoption papers, legal guardianship papers, birth certificates, pay stubs…I wasn’t sure WTF they could possibly be missing. Yet, after all this, I get a call from a woman (we’ll call her Mrs. J) at the Somerville office saying I needed to come in yet again to have my children’s cases reviewed. Anyway, after playing phone tag for a few days with the charming Mrs. J, I finally got a hold of her. She assured me that the payments were not in jeopardy, but that I should come in. Not wanting to upset the apple cart, I made an appointment for a few days later at 1 p.m. Another day of lost wages.

I arrived at that time with an appointment. No need to take a ticket and sit interminably waiting for someone to be available. At least that’s what I thought in my feeble little mind. I got there 20 minutes early for the appointment. At 3:45, fifteen minutes prior to the office closing, I was still sitting there. Frankly, it would have been faster had I taken a ticket and sat there waiting. My children were due to be dropped off from school at home and I couldn’t wait any longer. I went to the window and the girl consulted with Mrs. J and we set up a time to do it by phone.

Three days later, I was supposed to receive a call from Mrs. J at 1 p.m. She called at 5:14 p.m. and I wasn’t available. I then called the office the next day and left her a message. She did not call back. I called her again, and she did not call back. She then chose to call me on a Saturday afternoon. Who the fuck calls from the government on a Saturday afternoon? Give me a break. On Monday, I called again and she was not available, but the person I spoke to looked at the file and told me point blank that she didn’t know why I had to call because there was nothing in the file that indicated any review was due. She basically went over all the information with me, including the new address change, and said everything was okay. “Don’t worry about it.” Yeah. Famous last fucking words.

Just plain WTF?

Okay, August 1 is on a Sunday. My kids receive SSI. That means that the checks arrive the Friday before. That’s the way it goes. That’s the way it has gone for the seven years they’ve been receiving checks. No checks on Friday. I’m optimistic. They’ll be there by Monday. Monday rolls around. No checks. Tuesday rolls around. No checks. Still optimistic, I go and look to see if the money is in the direct deposit accounts. Nada. Zip. Now I’m pretty much ready to explode. Time to call Somerville, and thus begins the circus in a big way.

Turns out that they didn’t  put the address through and the DC office mailed the checks to Woburn. I believe my response was, “Are you fucking kidding me?” It’s at this time that I remember there is a warning posted at the SSA offices saying it’s illegal to harrass, threaten or physically harm the workers there. I can see why they need that sign. They are, simply put, the biggest bunch of dumbasses (my daughter’s word) on the fucking planet. They inspire people to “go postal.” No question about it. (So here, Alan Simpson, take a look at all this wasted effort over a simple address change. WTF is wrong with this picture, Alan? And we’re not close to being done yet. Can you hear me now, Alan?)

Again, Somerville asks me my new address and I give it to the woman. “Oh, yeah, here it is. It just wasn’t put through.” By now, I’m ready to just scream. Literally. Then, she says, “Oh, you’re in Wakefield?” I reply, “Yes.” And the woman then says, “Oh, well, you have to deal with the Malden office now.” I just about thought I’d get in my car and drive on over to Somerville to wring a few necks. (Paying attention, Alan?)

Here’s a little aside: When I mention the office change to my sister, the eternal optimist, she says, “Oh, the Malden office is wonderful. They were great when we went and reported that Auntie Buddy passed away.” I replied, “Yes, I’m sure they were wonderful. At that point, they were STOPPING PAYMENTS, for Christ’s sake. Get it? They are always wonderful when they are keeping your money.”

So, leaving no stone unturned, I call my old landlord in Woburn and he’s kind enough to check the mail box over the next few days. Nada. And there’s nada because the mailman knows I’m not there anymore. That means the checks are either forwarded or they could be sitting in the Woburn post office. I go to the Woburn post office. Now, I believe that Alan Simpson blabbered something about “privatizing” Social Security? I wouldn’t even go there, Alan. I wouldn’t go there because, you see, the postal service has been privatized and it blows. I know it blows because I went on line to have my mail forwarded only to find out that  the forwarding didn’t go through. How’s that? I get to the Woburn post office, describe the situation and how I went on line, and the postal employee says, “Yeah. They’ve had problems with the online forwarding.” To which I responded, “So, why do you continue to tell people to go online to do it? And charge them a buck on top of that?” Deer in the headlight look, and another twenty minutes making sure my address was correct.

Here’s a little aside, and I’m almost afraid to even relay this to you people, but I will. Not only did the Somerville SSA office forget to change my adress, but they even had my Woburn address wrong. They had me on Warren Street. I lived on Warren Avenue. There’s also  No. Warren Street in Woburn, which is different. And this further complicated the forwarding of my mail. WHAT THE FUCK?

Okay. So, the address thing is all set. And I have the postal service on the lookout for my checks. So, back to Social Security. On August 6th, I pay a visit to the Malden office. I sit with some nasty bitch who obviously doesn’t like her job or anyone who might make her do her job. Clearly Miss Douchebag doesn’t care about my rent. She promptly tells me that I have to wait another eight days to see if the checks are indeed forwarded to my new address in Wakefield. After that, I can report them as unreceived and they can re-issue checks (or simply make direct deposits since that’s why I set up those fucking accounts?). This will take an additional five days. Now, I give this office a copy of my fucking lease. I’m thinking, at this point, I should just make my lease billboard size and put it up right outside the Malden SSA office.

It is towards the end of my lovely meeting with Miss Douchebag that I’m tempted to throttle her. In her charming voice, she says, “Basically, your children are receiving welfare. You need to pass in your pay stubs or payments will stop.” Now, I’ve been receiving these benefits for my children for about seven years. They do not have one pay stub on fucking file. And I’m not about to start giving them to SSA either. I smiled at her. “Know what? I’ll just speak to a supervisor about that.” At the end of our conversation, Miss Douchebag assures me that everything is all set and I’m in the clear for September. I’m to call back in about 8 days if I do not receive the SSA checks for August. All I can say is: Fuckin’ A.

A couple of days pass, and I call the post office again to see if they’ve seen the checks just for shits and giggles. I’m optimistic when the guy I originally spoke to says, “Oh, yeah, we have one of your checks here.” As you can imagine, I immediately jump in my car and drive over there. Do you think it was a check? Nope. It was a letter mailed to me at my old (wrong) Woburn address from the Somerville office telling me that they got my new address. Now, I’m thinking, “Does it get any fucking worse than this?”

Oh, yes. It does.

The saga continues

The days pass interminably and then I call to report the checks unreceived. The woman at the end of the line at the Malden SSA office says, “I’ve reported them. It’ll take about five days for the new checks or the direct deposit to be received.” I wait another five days. Six. Seven. Nothing. I manage to scrape together enough money for the rent in two installments prior to going on vacation with the kids.

On vacation (just last week, mind you), I’m watching my Bank of America accounts like a hawk. No direct deposit. I have no idea if the checks have been sent to my house while I’m gone but I pretty much think: NOT. On Friday, the last day we’re on vacation, I decide to call the Malden office. I get a woman who tells me both accounts have been suspended. By now, I’m ballistic. I’m ballistic because, again, I’ve taken an action the week before with someone who told me my money would be there in five days. She doesn’t mention the fact that the accounts are immediately suspended if the checks are returned to the Treasury Department. Idiots abound at SSA. There’s no question about it.  She tells me that she has freed up my daughter’s account, but someone named Mr. Osorio has to handle Aaron’s account because he’s the only person who can do it. I ask to be transferred to Mr. Osorio. He is not there. I leave a message. And not a pleasant one, mind you.

I’m sitting at a water park, by the way, and I’m determined to resolve this on Friday before 4 p.m. when the office closes. I call Washington. You know, the home of SSA. The home port. The base. The home office. Guess what they tell me to do? Call my local office because really, they do nothing down there. They pretty much sit around playing with themselves and mailing out checks, apparently. He tells me that the accounts have been frozen. Thanks, pal. Then I tell him that they freed up my daughter’s account. He says, “Well, if they have, I can’t see it. You need to call Malden and ask for a supervisor.” I’m about ready to stick needles in my own eyes.

I call Malden. I ask for a supervisor. The woman immediately starts to ask me questions. And I’ve had enough of talking to the minions. I’m done. I’m finished. I’m through explaining this. I refuse to give her information beyond my social security number and those of my children. I insist on a supervisor. I get one. Or rather, I get a message machine. By now, I’m an obnoxious, ranting bitch on wheels. I explain the entire situation from start to finish. It is 2:45 p.m. when I hang up. I know the office closes at 4 p.m.

At 3:30 p.m., I’m waiting no more. I dial the Malden office again. By now they are waiting for me to call. I am now actually talking to the man who runs the Malden office (Mr. Nash). His comment to me is that there is no excuse for what has happened. I’ve done everything I’m supposed to do. They dropped the ball. (NO SHIT, SHERLOCK.) Blah. Blah. Blah. He’s going to have Mr. Osorio work on the accounts on Friday and Saturday. He asks if Mr. Osorio can contact me on Saturday if there are any questions. What I want to say is, “Are you fucking kidding me?” but what I say is, “Of course.” I do not hear from Mr. Osorio, so I call on Monday to check out the situation.

By Monday, I get Mr. Osorio’s assistant who tells me that my daughter’s account is all set. Mr. Osorio is working on my son’s now and he’ll call me on Tuesday morning between 7:00 and 9:00 a.m. to let me know if everything is okay. Mr. Osorio calls me this morning right on cue at 7:45 a.m. My daughter’s August money was put through on the 27th of August. It should be in her account. (I checked. It’s there.) The other payments should arrive by Friday at the latest via direct deposit. (I’m keeping my fingers crossed.)

So, Alan old boy, here’s the moral of the story: If you could just get them to do their jobs right from the beginning, you could save a shitload of money. It isn’t the benefits that’s costing this country. It’s the sheer ineffectiveness of the bureaucracy combined with the level of employee stupidity.

Okay, before I get into this I just have to relay something I saw today. I’m driving down the road to my house and I see this truck that says across the back Jesus Plastering. WTF? I thought Jesus was a carpenter! Who knew he did plastering too.

So, now that I’ve had a day off from retail hell, I’m back on the Millipore team building party thing.  As time passed, my department had a goal: We wanted to get the division VP (and our immediate boss), otherwise known here as SV, to one of our parties. We had a plan. We started leaving her anonymous voice mails and notes. We threatened to show up in her neighborhood if she didn’t show up at one of our parties. Of course, we’d show up as only we could. And she knew that.

I’m know there were parties after the Grand Kahuna party but, frankly, I can’t remember them in comparison. Let me tell you how this one started out: It started out with Bruce and I driving up to the Lewiston-Auburn area of Maine in search of  mushrooms. And I’m not talking about the fungi you cook with either. I’m talking mind altering mushrooms. Not peyote buttons, mind you. Those are disgusting. You actually hurl before you hallucinate on those babies. Only did those once. Never again. These were not as potent, but combine them with a little weed and tequila and you’ve got a pretty good buzz on hand.

Not much to do up there in Lewiston but drink, so we did that. We stopped in this little craphole of a bar and watched a rare afternoon Celtics game on television while we tried to find his friends who had access. After about five hours, we finally hit paydirt. Needless to say, we drove home and tested them out. Yeah, we were ready.

This was the infamous jello shot party. Everyone dressed in sixties garb (peace signs and paisley shirts everywhere) and several brought jello molds. The winner was the bed pan of yellow jello with tootsie roll pieces in it. I’m not quite clear on who brought that one, but it may have been Brian. Yeah. Disgusting. Sat it right in the middle of the food table for good measure.

By this time, there was a core group that arrived early at the Party Zone. The group consisted of my departments and my landlords. But an unusually large number of people showed for this one for some unexplained reason. A lot of people from work showed and a lot of our suppliers did too. Not only did my niece and her husband show (as they always did), but so did my nephews that were of legal age at the time. It took only about an hour or so for the party to ramp up. People were just crazy that night. The music was blaring and a “band” had already formed in the dining room. Then there was a knock on the door. All we heard was, “Oh my God!” and several of us ran to see what was up.

There stood our boss dressed in sixties garb, replete with the most incredible beehive hairdo you’d ever want to see. “I hear there’s some kind of party going on around here!” Then, she started laughing and so did we. Everyone was psyched. We weren’t the only people on her staff there. Many of her product and marketing managers were as well. The great thing about SV was that she didn’t cramp anybody’s style. People were just amazed and happy that she showed up. And she fit right in. A couple of hours after her arrival, she said, “Now I know what everybody’s talking about on Monday mornings and why they’re talking about it!”

The place was absolute craziness and those mushrooms went over big time. Then, the bell rang. It was late and nobody else was expected. My nephew had the intelligence to look out the window, then he turned around and looked at someone in the living room and said, “Get those bags off the table, man! It’s the police.” Some people reacted and got rid of the bags. The majority of the people just went back to partying. My nephew buzzed them in.

I’m dead sure they were expecting to see a bunch of teenagers raising hell and destroying the building. Instead, they found a bunch of thirty- and forty-year-olds acting like, well…assholes. It was loud and the windows were all open, so I’m sure the sound was spilling into the street. Somebody complained, but it wasn’t anyone in the building because they were all in my apartment partying. The police walked in and started looking around the apartment. I wish I could say that everyone stopped what they were doing, but they didn’t. In fact, SV had gathered a few people from my department into a corner and was leading them in a very cockeyed version of “Bringing in the Sheaves.” Their version was called “Bringing in the Sheep.” It was hysterical. She just smiled at the police as they walked around. Then they headed for the door again. They turned around on the way out.

“Do us a favor. Close the windows and turn on the air conditioning if it’s hot. We don’t want to have to come back here. And be sure the people who are drunk stay here. Okay?” They opened the door to leave. “By the way, have fun.” That was it. This particular party didn’t end until about five in the morning. There were several people camped out on my floor.

Like I said, there was never a party of this scope again. But I have to tell you, the police stationed a cruiser outside starting at midnight for each and every party to follow. I wonder why?

…and I swear to Buddha, Jehova or whomever else you want to swear to that I have a sign on my forehead that reads, “Only whack jobs come to my cash register line, puhleeeeeeze.” Today I’m ringing away and some guy comes up while on his cell phone.

“Okay, now I’m going to do something strange,” he says to me. And he hands me the phone.

Me, of course, being the happy-go-lucky little employee that I am says, “Hello?”

“Who is this?”

“Oh, I work at [Name]. Apparently your husband wants you to order your coffees from me.” And I’m guessing this is the case because he’s a fucking moron. As it turns out, I was not far from the truth. What I was soon to realize was that I was dealing with not one, but two, morons.

She proceeded to describe these two drinks. Her first description around totally confused me. And I’m not the fucking moron in this equation. So she says, “Okay, let me try this again because I know I can do this better.”

My response? “Okay.”

But here’s what I really wanted to say:

“Okay, you fucking idiot. What are you talking about. I’m on a cell phone at the register and the people in line behind your husband are ready to mutiny and shoot me in the bleeding head. Can you please just get this done already?”

All the while this is going on, the person who actually has to make these two drinks and the supervisor are there laughing at me because, although I’m being sweet and charming on the phone, my body language and facial expressions are belying my true feelings…the ones that are telling my brain to “kill the idiot in front of you and move the line along.”

The order turned out to be two of the largest cold drinks we offer, with a combination of hot and cold items and — between the two drinks — exactly 28 pumps of syrup. Are you fucking kidding me? Twenty-eight pumps of syrup. Oh, and then, I forgot to mention that at the end of the order she says, “Can you do me a favor?”

By now, I’m in such a state that I say, “Oh, sure.”

Here’s what I really wanted to say:

“Okay, sister, haven’t I done you enough favors already today? I’m on your husband’s cell phone taking your drink order in the middle of a one-hundred-degree-day afternoon rush. Are you kidding me?”

But I didn’t say that. So, then, she says, “Can you ask him to bring me home seven packages of Equal?”

I mean, why bother at that point? Twenty-eight pumps of syrup isn’t enough? Why go to Equal now? Just order thirty-five fucking pumps of syrup instead. WTF?

The only thing we can hope for is that these two go into a diabetic coma before they order this crap from us again. But I’m never that lucky.

I am far from done with Millipore party stories, but I simply have to interject something here. This is once again from the annals of what I say to customers versus what I really want to say. Again, I’m not going to reveal my employer’s trade name. No siree. Not today anyway, but I have to tell you that there are a lot of irritating customers who frequent my store (as well as a lot of extremely wonderful customers, I might add). Here’s what pisses me off.

One from column A

A lot of these people come off like they are so much better than anyone else. I’m sure this is proportionally related to the amount of gold jewelry they wear…at least in their minds. If they are so educated, rich and smart, why can’t they say a simple word like ARTISAN. Nope. They can’t. To many of these people, it’s ARTESIAN bread. Like what? Does the bread come from a fucking well? Maybe there is indeed a bread that is baked in an underground oven and comes flying up out of the ground under pressure. Maybe I’m missing something. Maybe it’s because the people from snootyville get to add a syllable and sound even smarter than others. Or maybe it’s because they don’t understand phonics. You know, PHONICS. Read the fucking label. Sound the word out. So, let’s go through this again:

ARTESIAN: Refers to a well in which water is under pressure and comes to the surface naturally.

ARTISAN: A worker who practices a trade or handicraft OR a product made by a craftsman in small quantities.

NOT EVEN FUCKING CLOSE, FOLKS. It isn’t Artesian Bread. It’s Artisan Bread. ARTISAN. There. Done with that rant.

And now, a word from the land of cluelessness

There are also people who come through the store who are simply clueless, in a fucking fog, out of touch, and disinterested in knowing what the hell they are talking about. Let’s take the issue of TRANSGENDERED vs. TRANSVESTITE. Yes, we have a transgendered person in the store. SHE is a wonderful person. One of our customers, however, refers to her as a transvestite. Okay, let’s understand the difference here:

TRANSVESTITE: A person, and especially a male, who adopts the dress and often the behavior typical of the opposite sex especially for purposes of emotional or sexual gratification.

TRANSGENDERED: A person who expresses or identifies with a gender that differs from the one which corresponds to the person’s sex at birth. These people aren’t necessarily transvestites, folks. Generally speaking, they are going through some medical process to change their gender identity.

Okay, now we have established that differentiation. The subject of his question was even more disturbing, since we have also hired a female employee of Middle Eastern origin who happens to wear the traditional head garb. He wanted to know how the “Muslim person” was getting along with the “transvestite.” You know, like we had some juicy stuff to report. Like we would? He asked me while I was at the register. I just looked at him stupefied, completely taken aback however momentarily. Then, I broke my silence and said, “You know, [NAME], we don’t have those problems in this store. We all get along and watch each other’s backs. We don’t need those problems coming in from the outside.” Later on, our manager spoke to him and straightened him out. ‘Oh, but he’s just irritant number one on this topic. There’s a woman who’s even worse.

Okay, so, she’s pregnant. But her rudeness goes beyond simple hormonal explanations. She’s just a rude bitch, plain and simple. I swear to whomever is up there that she’s going to give birth to the spawn of Satan. No question about it. The thing is going to be born with little horns and a nasty little attitude. This wonderment of nature comes in one day, walks up to the register to order, and says, “Okay, so there was a guy there on the bar yesterday with make-up on. Was he kidding?”

Employee A responded, “Oh, you mean (NAME)? No, actually she’s not kidding.”

Now, this woman is not very old. So, she doesn’t have that excuse either. She must have spent the majority of her existence under a fucking rock if she doesn’t get it. Either way, she was just out of line. Her attitude was despicable. That said, I thought Employee A was very polite to her. This is what I would have wanted to say had she come up to my cash register:

“Get a fucking clue, honey. What makes you think you deserve an explanation to begin with? Just order your freakin’ coffee and get the hell out of our store. The only thing we owe you is coffee. We don’t owe you a peep show into our fucking personal lives. End of story. Oh, and by the way, I hope your baby is a hermaphrodite. Have a nice day, you Godforsaken douce bag!”

And since I’m sure she wouldn’t have a clue what a hermaphrodite is:

HERMAPHRODITE: An animal or person having both male and female reproductive organs.

Now that I think of it, that’s a pretty harsh thing to wish on the unsuspecting spawn. Just the fact that he or she will have to grow up with the mother from hell is probably curse enough. I’m trying to envision her in say, oh, thirty years when she’s in menopause. Hide the handguns and the nukes.

A few weeks later, she’s back at my register again. We have a floater as a routine who helps move the line along with the second person ringing (that would be me). She’s a confused bitch on top of everything else. Some really nice customer places his order and she turns to him and says, “I don’t know what you are doing, but you just ordered before me.” I held my tongue and proceeded to serve her highness, but here’s what I wanted to say:

“No dickwad. He’s just fine. You simply don’t “get” the line movement. The physics are waaaay too far advanced for your tiny little pea brain. And by the way, have I told you what a fucking caustic personality you have today and every day you waltz into this store to bring a little ray of sunshine to us all?”

Okay. I’m pretty much done with this rant. I feel much better. Goodnight.

A little post-”We’re So You” party note here: We had a ton of stuff left over come Monday morning and we were determined not to let it go to waste. We had plenty of the 1-800-the-ladies posters left, so we enlisted a couple of guys to hang them up in the men’s bathroom in the marketing department.  We also hung a bunch of the posters in the hallways along the way MY came into the building. When she arrived at work that day, all she said was, “You guys are in big trouble.” We laughed at her. “Sure we are, Marcia.” About an hour after her arrival, however, one of the product managers (we’ll call him Ken) walked into MY’s office and said, “Marcia, you look pretty good in that poster in the men’s room.” In a loud, booming voice, all we heard was “Deborah!” All hell broke loose on the marketing floor and before she knew it, everyone was hanging out in the bathrooms checking out the posters.

After this party, word about the team building parties really started to spread throughout the company. More people than ever showed up at the next one.

With every new party (and these happened about every two weeks), the ante was raised. Immediately after the “We’re So You” party, we had no particular theme. I was really against forcing anyone to have to dress as anything to have a good time, so we just pretty much let people free form. This time around, Bruce, my landlord’s lover, decided he was going to dress as Tammy Faye Baker. We didn’t tell a soul. Bruce was a pisser and we certainly got into our share of trouble together. If anyone could pull this off, it was Bruce. Coming as Tammy Faye definitely required a shopping trip.

Bruce and I went to Sears to get his shoes. (They were fucking huge. Sears was the third store we stopped in. Nobody had a size 10 women’s high heel.) We went to some incredible dive on Route 1 in Saugus to get a wig. I have no idea where we went for the slutty dress he bought, but it was blood red. Perfect. The make up was a moot point. You could get that trashy stuff anywhere. By the time he knocked on the door, he was carrying a fucking Bible and a martini. And he had his lover, Steven, in tow…dressed as Jim Baker…replete with a tux and tails (and just a pair of boxers from the waist down). It was an amazing show.

When Bruce knocked on the door, he was crying just like Tammy Fay did. He kept dabbing at his eyes with a Kleenex, talking about how his (her) husband had an affair and how crushed he (she) was. Steven just stood a little behind him and to his right, continually handing him Kleenex. It was hysterical. The look is hard to describe. Somewhere there are photos of this, and I’m going to search for them. In lieu of that, I’ll try to explain as best I can: Bruce had a trashy blonde wig on and plenty of bright red lipstick kind of all over his face. Both his mascara and nose were running because he was “crying.” He had on a low-cut blood red dress; he even shaved his legs and chest for the event. We must have bought all the cotton balls in Walgreens to pad his bra.

This was a crazy party. People got all sorts of fucked up. First, one of the product managers (we’ll call her LD) got really wasted on margaritas. Suddenly, she was gone. We were in a panic thinking that she drove home under those circumstances. We later found her upstairs in my landlords’ apartment drinking coffee and talking to Bruce. This was in the wee hours of the morning, way beyond the time when Bruce changed out of his Tammy Faye get up. I actually have no idea what time she left, but she eventually sobered up and left. (I can tell you that her husband was none too happy about the fact that she was out most of the night.)

Another friend, and a member of my staff (we’ll call him BD) also got messed up pretty badly. This time, however, Bruce called me on my cell laughing like hell. “You have to get up here and get a load of Brian.” I immediately went upstairs to find BD a nervous wreck, sitting on Bruce and Steven’s sofa. He looked up at me, “Deb, I think I’m gay.” I looked at Bruce, who just rolled his eyes. I shook my head. “Brian, I think you’re drunk and messed up on pot. But you are not gay, bubba.” Later on I said to Bruce, “You know, I think he’s gay too but he looked like he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. The last thing I want to do in my condition is play psychology. I can barely remember my name.” We both started laughing. (By the way, B is married today. Oh, yeah, to a woman.)

And now for something completely…different

Okay, I’m figuring that Bruce as Tammy Faye must have been inspirational because two weeks later, several people dressed up as characters. MY told us in advance that she wanted to come as Elvis Presley. BD chimed in that he wanted to be James Brown. These two idiots went all out.

Before the party, we went out and bought a velvet Elvis painting and a street sign that read Elvis Presley Boulevard. MY even went to a costume outlet in Arlington and got a genuine Elvis costume, complete with the hair. It was amazing. BD did the same with James Brown. He put on blackface and came in a white tux. You should have seen his hair. It was absurd.

But Bruce was not to be outdone. He came in a white turban and wrap. His name was Sodomy Insane (that’s Saddam Hussein to the rest of you). It was madness. Those who had never been to these parties before could not believe what they were seeing. That was the night somebody asked what one of the dishes was and my niece’s husband replied, “Endangered coconut baby seal.” I thought the woman was going to pass out. It was actually coconut chicken, but we were having waaaay to much fun at her expense to tell her the truth.

This was also the night Bruce introduced us to Grapefruit Flips, a really simple but deadly drink. Basically, you put some ice cold grapefruit juice in a glass and pour a ladle of vodka on top. It works best if the vodka has been in the freezer. No mixing required. Simply chug it. Wow. (Personally, I think vodka could be classified as its own food group, but that’s just me.) Many people fell asleep on my floor that night, but I had to take the dog out in the wee hours of the morning. I was less than graceful during this task and the dog pulled me down the stairs on my ass. Apparently, everyone in the building pretty much heard that.

I’d be a liar if I said I remembered every minute of these parties. There was waaaay too much alcohol and contraband floating around for that. But I do remember some of the highlights. On this particular night, The Pretenders were the band of choice and we must have sung about twenty songs.

All I remember is my phone ringing and Bruce was laughing like hell, “I gotta’ know. Did you just fall down the stairs taking Simone out?” I started laughing too, and I ended up going upstairs and continuing to party with Bruce while some of my guests camped out on my apartment floor.

These parties were crazy, but the grand kahuna of parties was about to take place. And that’s another post for another day, by the way.

Okay, it took a while for all hell to break loose in Melrose. But it was a thing of beauty in the making. The first team-building party at my place was simple enough. It was a boxer shorts party. Everyone had to come in boxers. No problem. Everyone did, and there was no shortage of amazing designs on display, including an incredible pair of Jaws boxers. The Argentinian Tornado, NW, had a new twist on boxers. (You’ve met NW before. She’s the woman who fell into the boxcar after we all went drinking at The Salty Dog.) She pinned gummy worms to her boxers, which my schnauzer, Simone, proceeded to eat one at a time until she got sick.  That dog was jumping at her pants all night. The parties got better and more creative from there.

In fact, the parties expanded in scope and attendance. Not only did my department come, but the product and marketing managers began to come, along with their husbands and wives. The more boring attendees sat in the living room and watched sports because most of the action happened in the dining room. There was a reason for this. I would literally take the day before each party off to cook an unbelievable amount of food…and the bar was in the kitchen. At first, we stuck to frozen margaritas of various colors, then we moved onto tequila shots using Monte Alban Mezcal with the worm in the bottom of the bottle.  But people also brought stuff to drink, so it was crazy shit all the time. There was also plenty of maryjane to go around.

My two landlords, also proud members of the gay community, started to attend as did the rest of the people in my apartment building. Then there were my nieces and nephews (the ones who were old enough to be there and in the presence of contraband). The great thing was that everyone got along and just let it all hang out.

Pretty soon we had amassed an entire orchestra of plastic instruments, like saxophones, guitars, banjos, trumpets, maracas, marimbas, harmonicas and one piano. I had no shortage of great music and it would blare from the time people began to arrive until the wee hours of the morning. I’ll tell you one thing, get enough booze and contraband into people and they love standing in front of a microphone and singing The Beatles, Creedence Clearwater Revival and the Rolling Stones. The beauty was that my neighbors were busy partying with us, so it didn’t much matter how loud it got.

The “We’re So You” Party

The second party started the ball rolling. My landlord called me up on the phone one day and told me that they found one of the zaniest members of my staff (and the oldest, by the way) in his Tufts yearbook. We’ll call her MY. She’s hard to explain. The best description I can give you is she is a totally stream-of-consciousness individual. Nothing that came out of her mouth made sense, and everything made sense at the same time. She’s still as funny as hell.  I could not believe it, so I had to go upstairs and look. It was true. There she sat, almost 30 years earlier, with Earl, her former husband and a former classmate of my landlord’s. It was too good to resist.

We blew up the photo and photocopied it, then we just cut out her head. We made about 30 copies of this and put them on tongue depressors with glue. Then we took her head and replaced the heads of women in every single stupid ad we could find, like 1-800-the-ladies, a stairmaster ad, and some dump plastic wrap ad from Good Housekeeping, just to name a few. We made literally hundreds of copies of these. But we went even further. We took a bunch of quarters and put her head where George Washington’s was. We labeled the back “two bits.”  We also put her on copies of one dollar bills. Everyone would have a wad of cash and coins to use when they “bought” drinks at the bar.

We literally spent hours in the office photocopying and gluing everything until it was just perfect, then we called every attendee on the phone and told them what was going on. Everyone had to be there that Saturday a half hour before MY arrived to get ready. Everybody was into it. Before MY got to my building, some of the attendees took the posters we’d made and pasted them in the hallway leading up to my apartment. The rest were hung on my apartment wall.

We pretty much had no clue how we would handle it when she walked in, but we all had what we called “Marcia Masks.” (Okay, I just gave away her name but she really won’t care.) I know it was my idea at the last minute to use John Cougar Mellancamp’s song, “Hurt So Good.” Instead of singing “Hurt so good, come on baby make it hurt so good” we changed the words to “We’re so you, come on Marcia now we’re so you.” They fit perfectly. Even though she saw some of the posters in the hall (we could hear her saying “Oh, my God! Where did you get that picture?”), she had no clue what to expect when she walked into the apartment. The song went on as soon as she walked through the door and all thirty of us sang the entire thing right through to the end holding the masks in front of our faces.

I have to tell you it was pretty amazing and a total surprise to MY. She loved it. I know for certain that party didn’t wind down until about 3 a.m., and it set the tone for the rest of the parties we were about to have.

And I do mean “team building,” not “empire building.” I never got caught up in that corporate bullshit. Simply because of its function, my marcom group had to interact with a lot of different people…like the in-house design group, product and marketing managers, vice presidents of divisions, and a ton of outside suppliers. I don’t even know how the hell it started, but we went on a tear with “team building” parties. The first one we planned was a whale watching trip. We had the whole marcom group, plus a couple of people from corporate and some members of the graphics group.  The morning weather sucked, so it never happened. The boats weren’t going out. That’s when the fun began.

We ended up at The Salty Dog at Quincy Market and proceeded to begin drinking about 11 a.m. Eventually, the sun came out (and it got h-o-t) and I’m sure the boats took off, but they took off without us. We were not in any condition to get on boats…except stationary ones. So, we decided to go on a tour of the U.S.S. Constitution and walk the Freedom Trail. The notion of just walking was absurd by the time we got around to that.

Nevertheless, we embarked on our walking journey. But it didn’t take us long to get sidetracked. Somehow, we took a wrong turn and ended up in some freakin’ gravel lot somewhere in Charlestown. There was an abandoned freight train box car there, and it was open. Needless to say, one of us to decided to climb up the ladder. That somebody would be a woman we’ll refer to as NW. She was Venezuelan and was our International Coordinator. She fell in because she was drunk, and it took us forever to get her out because we were all drunk and could not stop laughing.

Luckily for us, we had all met at the Melrose commuter train stop near my apartment and taken the “T” into town. About four in the afternoon, we took the “T” back out to Melrose and we all ended up partying in my apartment until late into the evening. I remember cooking some kind of pasta for everyone.  When I woke up in the morning, there were still some people sleeping on my living room floor.

That day began a run of “teambuilding parties” the likes of which I’m sure have never been seen again…anywhere.

The Millipore Marketing Communications Department

There’s no question that my department was like The Bad News Bears of marketing communications. We were always playing practical jokes on people and finding new ways to enhance our urban legend. But I kid you not, we were undoubtedly the  most productive department in the entire corporation for a number of years running and everybody knew it — including senior management. That kind of performance gives you plenty of leeway on the other side.

We had what the company called ‘flex’ hours. That meant that members of my staff could come in early and go home early if they wanted…or come in late and go home late. All that mattered was that we got the work done and met our deadlines. We did, and the material we produced was better than good. During this time frame, I changed the ground rules for departmental management. I didn’t want to just sit around telling other people what to do. I had my own accounts. I wrote. I produced material. And I managed the group. Not only did I review the members of my staff every six months, but I had them review me every six months.

I was friends with all of them, but they knew I was the one who’s reputation and neck was on the line and they respected me. They did what they were supposed to do. I was not a micro-manager. In fact, I hated that whole notion, so I didn’t do it. I trusted them to get the job done and I trusted them to come to me if something was in the way so I could move it out of their way. One of the best days of my professional career was the day I was given the Distinctive Leadership Award. My staff — from both the marcom side and the tech publications group — went to the VP of Marketing (my boss) and she, in turn, went to Human Resources and they basically instituted this award. It was given to me during a divisional quarterly review meeting.

The difference between the two groups was amazing. The Tech Publications Group was very intense and anal retentive. This group’s responsibilities were very different from those of the marcom group. It was a less creative endeavor and more functional because this group produced a step-by-step manuals for use and maintenance of our products. They were a quiet lot, by and large. The Marketing Services Group, on the other hand, was insane.

One day, we all decided to come in early and used allen wrenches to take apart the product managers’ offices and rearrange them just so we could see them fumbling around to figure out where they sat. Then, we put a sign up over the area that read “Darwin’s Workshop.” Within about five minutes, they figured out who had done it and were standing in my office door. The great thing was that they thought it was funny as hell.

Another time, we victimized the VP of Marketing (and my boss) whom we’ll just call SV (the second greatest manager I’ve ever had in my lifetime). She had important clients in from some huge pharmaceutical company (can’t remember who it was now), but that didn’t stop us from putting a huge six foot teddy bear in her seat with her brief case opened on the desk and a bunch of smaller stuffed animals with notebooks and pens around her conference table while they were all out to lunch.

Three of us then hid in the office next to hers because the President was traveling at the time. We heard them come back in. My boss stopped short in the doorway. “Oh, my God. I’m sorry. You’ll have to forgive me. I’m sure this is my marketing communications group’s doing. I don’t know what to say except that they’re very…creative.” We waited a few minutes and then walked by her office like we were coming up from the cafeteria. “Oh, Deb!” She yelled, interrupting her meeting. So, I walked back. “By the way, I’ll get you later.” She did too. But that’s a different post for a different day.

We also took advantage of the Quarterly Review meetings that happened four times a year to victimize people. We actually got SV again at one of these meetings. She was sitting there when a guy dressed in a pig suit walked in. I was right behind her when she leaned over and said to the head of R & D, “Look, they’re going to get someone at this meeting.” All of a sudden, the pig walked up to the microphone and yelled, “Suuuuueeeeeeee!” She turned bright read and we heard her yell, “Oh, my God, it’s me!” It was a thing of beauty. But we also victimized each other.

We had a party for one of our staff who was getting married, so we decorated the conference room in condoms. One of my lead writers decided to victimize the sales force liaison by taking his keyboard and rearranging the keys so that, when he typed, the wrong letters were coming out. He had already called the MIS Department to come look at his system when we finally confessed to him that he’d been had. We had one staff member who was terrified of mice, so we left one of those wiggling rats with its head in a trap under her desk one morning. We heard this ungodly shriek when she arrived at the office and pulled out her chair. It’s a good thing she didn’t have a heart condition.

And remember NW, who fell into the boxcar? We gave her a little notebook so we could teach her frequently used sayings, just like we’d done for Big T before her. We taught her ridiculous things like, “Now you’re cooking with charcoal!” Then, one day it was almost like deja vu for me. During a staff meeting, she leaned over and asked, “Deb, can you tell me, what’s a blow job?” Everyone burst out laughing. After I explained it to her, she turned beet red and just started laughing.

This was, therefore, the perfect group to institute “teambuilding parties” and we knew it. The trip to The Salty Dog was a modest beginning. Things were about to heat up and all hell was poised to break loose in Melrose. And it did.

Now that I’ve gotten that rant out of the way, I’m back on the topic of Millipore. By the way, this is a brandy new logo for Millipore. I remember the old three-bar logo. That’s still my favorite. There was one other that consisted of paying some New York dickwad a million bucks to use the word as the logo. Sheer fucking genius. But I digress. You know, I’d be a liar if I said I remembered every single chronological career progression at Millipore. I don’t. They used to centralize, then divisionalize, then centralize again. It was a never-ending circle jerk, so to speak. It depended upon the whim of upper management.

What I do remember, however, is the one time Millipore centralized and it worked to my advantage because I met one of the two greatest managers I’ve ever worked for. We’ll just call her GGJ because those are her actual initials.  She was hired from W.R. Grace, but had many years of communications experience. She immediately went about organizing our group like an actual advertising agency. We were called Account Managers, and we were given specific business units to work for.

While this organization was in place, I learned everything there was to know about marketing communications and worked for every single business unit — from Analytical Products, to Pharmaceutical Processing, to Semiconductor Manufacturing. It was the job of the Account Manager to write copy, as well as manage inside and outside services (such as our in-house design and trade show groups, outside ad agencies, freelance writers and mail houses). Eventually, I was promoted to Senior Account Manager and had my first two direct reports, a Catalogue Specialist (a position I hired for) and the International Promotions Coordinator (a person who moved over from the International Division).

GGJ was head of our department for several years and I have to say I learned more under her than under any manager I’ve ever worked for.  It wasn’t necessarily that she taught you everything herself. She simply put you in a position to learn the things you needed to learn to move ahead. It was up to you. You got as much out of it as you put in, and she never stood in your way if she thought you had potential. She clearly thought I did because there was no shortage of opportunity for me while I was working for her.

As I’ve said, Millipore was constantly divisionalizing and centralizing. I eventually settled in as the account manager of what was then called the Laboratory Products Division and I was very happy about that. The division encompassed the basic bread and butter of Millipore, the small-dollar items: Laboratory life science research products, analytical filtration products, water microbiology and other environmental products as well as some medical devices. But there were other opportunities. I became the New Product Launch specialist, I trained new product managers in the basic principles of marketing communications and how to work with our group and, when it came time to launch the Clinical Diagnostics Division, they gave me that responsibility as well.

Simply put, I got things done. I was fast and could handle a ton of projects at one time. I could write. And I was a great manager of outside services. I handled three pretty huge newsletters that involved interviewing both product managers and customers, managed the mini-catalogue program, and directed the production of the big Millipore catalogue that went across all divisions. During this time, I won two Millipore Innovation Awards, one for the mini-catalogue and another for the launch of the Millicell Culture Plate Insert.  I also managed the launch of the Immobilon Transfer Membrane. We won an Effie for that campaign along with our ad agency, Mintz & Hoke.

Within several years of GJJ joining Millipore, a big change was on the horizon. A lot of it was politics and, unfortunately, she was going to be a casualty of that. She knew what that was all about. When that day came, she went to the President of the Analytical Division and told him he didn’t need to hire from the outside; he should just give me the job. I got along with the product managers and had a good relationship with the sales organization. I also got pretty much got along with management, although I wasn’t afraid to argue with them over important things. But they knew that by then. Not only did he give me the Marketing Services Group, but he also gave me the Technical Publications Group. That made sixteen direct reports.

Once I was in charge, one of the biggest arguments I had with management in general was budget cuts. It never failed that when the sales numbers were off, they’d come poaching on my turf looking for me to cough up money so that the bottom line would look better to the shareholders. My argument was solid. Here we are in the Lab Products Division. We have hundreds of products that we sell to thousands of people ranging in the millions of dollars every year. We have about 43 sales people. They are focused on key accounts only. You know, like NIH, Cold Spring Harbor, Duke…the big buyers. But there are literally millions of oneseys and twoseys that contribute to the bottom line. They never see a sales rep and never will. This is how it works: Out of sight. Out of mind.

At this stage, the days of Millipore dominating simply by virtue of the fact that it was the only game in town was gone. We still had the best products, but the customer perception of that had dwindled. We had a lot of competition and we were the price leaders, but we weren’t the only game in town. Many of the small-dollar filter products had become commodities. If you didn’t stay in front of your customers and prospects, they’d simply go elsewhere. This was pretty much the subject of battle every six months or so.

GJJ was gone and a huge reorganization lay on the horizon. Here’s where I’d meet the next greatest manager I’ve ever worked for. We’ll just call her SV. I have to tell you, the best of times were about to begin for my group. And I was about to bring new meaning to the notion of “team building.”

I’m taking a short break in my Millipore narrative to introduce you to a real character. We’ll just call him Big T, because that’s what I called him. And he called me Big D. I met Big T while in the International Divison. In my last post, I talked about going back into the domestic group, and I did. But prior to that — and, seriously, I do have memory issues around Millipore because I spent so many years there and they seem to run into one another — I was back in the International Divison. This was after, of course, they rolled Intertech into Europe and made it one big group.

The International Division had a new President, whom we’ll refer to as JL. He was a pretty respectable leader. Although I did not work directly for him, we got along really well. I worked directly for his VP. We’ll refer to him as AW. (By the way, these are all legitimate initials; I’m just leaving the names out.) Big T was hired in 1979 as President of the Japanese subsidiary (or Nihon Millipore Ltd.), a pretty big job. However, it was common practice to have new upper management personnel spend a significant amount of the time in the home office. They gave Big T the office right next to mine, and it began a great relationship that I remember fondly to this day. This is a guy I’ll never forget.

I loved Millipore because it offered flexible hours. The other thing I loved about it was, if you were considered a trustworthy, productive and valued employee, they didn’t watch over you. I pretty much called my own shots, and I loved making my own hours. I did a lot of writing, so it was not uncommon for me to arrive at the office around five in the morning when it was quiet. Most of the time, I’d work until at least 4 p.m., but flex hours allowed me to sometimes be out of there by 2 p.m. if I felt comfortable that my work load was manageable.

The Japanese, of course, are notorious workaholics, and Big T was no exception. Most of the time, we’d arrive at the same time and have coffee together. He’d walk in and say, “Good morning, Big D. How are you this morning?” And I’d reply in kind. But as fate would have it, we turned this mother into a competition to see who could arrive earliest. Millipore didn’t officially “open” until 8 a.m., so the only way we could get into the building that early was via the guard’s desk. We had to sign in, so we had a legitimate timekeeper. He was happy to help out. I can’t remember the guy’s name, but he really got into it and had some fun with it. The day I signed in at 3:52 a.m. was the day Big T said to me, “I give up. You win. You’re crazier than any Japanese businessman I’ve met!”

An attempt at Americanization

In spite of the fact that Big T was a big-time hire…the President of Nihon Millipore Ltd., we knew we could have fun with him. Remember BG of  Bridget Calendar fame from my earlier post? Well, he decided we needed to teach Big T how to communicate in American slang so that he could be more involved in meetings. We got him a small notebook and pen to keep in his pocket. On the front, we put a label that read Big T’s Little Book of Slang. He took this very seriously.

We taught him all kinds of stuff…phrases like “Tell them to shit or get off the pot,” “Now you’re cooking with gas” and “Be there or be square  We also told him the appropriate time to use his new phrases. We also taught him things like “What the hell is wrong with you?” and “That’s a no-brainer.” Then, there’s the infamous “There is no gravity. The earth sucks.” But the best thing we taught him to say was, “Well, shit fire and save matches!” when somebody actually did something right. I mean, to actually watch this little Japanese guy blurt this stuff out at meetings was hilarious. Every time he did it, JL, the President of the International Division, would look over at us and shake his head. But for BG, it didn’t stop there.

One week we had a pretty full crew in Bedford. We were all sitting at a lunch table when Big T took his notebook out of his shirt pocket and looked at AW, and said, “Alan, what is pussy?” The entire table had been chattering and it just plain stopped. There was dead silence. I was quietly laughing my head off because Big T had no freakin’ idea what he’d just asked, and AW was left holding the bag. By the way, AW was convinced the perpetrator was either me or BG. It definitely wasn’t me, so if it wasn’t me everyone knew it was BG. I was the only female sitting at the table, so AW asked me to leave. I just looked at him and said, “No way. Go ahead. Explain this one. I’m all ears.”

He did explain it to Big T, but not in our presence. I have to tell you, that wasn’t the only disgusting word BG managed to teach Big T.  AW had a full list of stuff to explain to him over the next several days. BG just kept going at it like the Energizer Bunny during the course of that week.

“No more Pearl Harbors!”

One week, both the division president and vice president were at an offsite meeting and the secretaries were doing double duty on a project for Big T. Both of the big guys were due back in on Monday and Big T was scheduled to give a dry run of his big presentation to Millipore’s CEO. The secretarial staff and two temps had been working on numbers and overheads the entire week, typing and retyping them. Finally, the project was just about done on Friday, so Big T decided to take all the secretaries and the temps out to lunch together. We borrowed a secretary from another group, and I agreed to help her cover the phones for them while they were gone.

Now, JL was pretty much anal retentive when it came to secretarial coverage. He had some rules that I considered over the top. Had he been here, he would never have allowed Big T to take all the division secretaries out all at once. He would have to do it over a couple of days. I thought that was just pretty stupid given the amount of work they just did. They were gone for a couple of hours and, in the meantime, I had a three-hour meeting. None of us were aware that JL was going to get out of his meeting ahead of schedule and show up at the office after three on a Friday afternoon, but that’s exactly what he did. And, of course, Big T had treated the ladies to a bit of wine with their lunch.

When I got out of the meeting, I walked by JL’s office and saw the most unbelievable scene. I just burst out laughing. As angry as he was at Big T, JL was laughing too. After getting called out for taking the secretaries out for lunch without leaving enough phone coverage, Big T dropped to his knees in front of JL and began bowing. As he continued to bow, he kept repeating over and over, “Please boss, forgive me. No more Pearl Harbors! I promise.” It was hysterical.

Everyone was pretty sad the day that Big T’s year in the U.S. was over. We had a great party for him on his final Friday. By that Sunday, he was back in Japan with his family and running the Nihon Millipore Ltd.

I made it a point to seek him out when he returned to the U.S. We had a mutual respect for each other and he had no problem joking around in spite of our cultural differences. I remember the last time I saw him. I had moved into the Lab Water Division as the International Marketing Services Manager and was having a miserable time with my European reports.  I made a comment about the pressure making my hair gray. He turned around and looked at me and said, “Hey, stop complaining! At least you still have hair!”

Millipore Corporation has a long and varied history. Ironically, it was founded in 1954, the year I was born. The genius behind Millipore’s inception was a guy named Jack Bush. When I started there in 1974, it was about a $50 million corporation. I was there for the $500 million dollar party (that could be a post unto itself; we’ll have to see) at the Sheraton Boston. I’ve lost track of it’s financial performance over time, but I can tell you that Merck KGaA of Germany just bought Millipore for $7.2 billion dollars.

Sometime during 1976, I became the writer of the distributor newsletter for the Intertech Division of Millipore. This division handled non-European foreign countries, like the Middle East, Russia, China and other Far East countries, Australia and Latin America. The newsletter basically told our distributors what was being done in marketing communications in the United States and Europe in support of product sales, and allowed the distributors to adapt those messages and mailings. That meant I’d work with the distributors to translate material into Farci and Russian, or whatever other language was needed. Needless to say, I spent a lot of time traveling into Transtek Associates in Cambridge.

We definitely had some live hard-play hard characters in that division in those days, but they were also traveling throughout the Middle East (and risking their lives) at a time when the political conflicts were exploding. I can remember more than one occasion when one of their wives would call us to find out if we’d heard from them. Keep in mind that it was well before cell phones were in vogue, so satellite phones were unheard of. We’d all have to wait until they made it safely to an office or a consulate and called in to let us know they were okay.

It was also during this time that normalization of relations with China was going on. That was pretty exciting because I got to work on the very first ad campaign for the People’s Republic. It wasn’t possible to advertise in magazines back then. That came much later. What we did was put our ads in these two huge volumes of material from U.S. businesses. These were shipped over to the Chinese government. That was the only way the U.S. could do business with China at the time. Because of the cultural differences, we had to stay away from clever headlines and copy. It was basically just straight product information and photos. Nevertheless, it was exciting and I was pretty proud of the work I did.

Asking me to remember the exact progression of events that are now more than 30 years old is asking a lot…A LOT. I’ve done some damage to these little gray cells over the years and I was pretty much a party animal during my early Millipore years, so I can’t remember exactly when things happened. And, frankly, I may have moved out of the Intertech Division and then back into the International Division later, but I do remember some things very specifically. One of the things I remember is a sales meeting where the sales manager who handled Australia, New Zealand and surrounding areas was asked to give a presentation and proceeded to cause quite a stir. We are not talking about political correctness at this time, mind you. PC did not exist…at least not at that company.

The presentation was on our research laboratory water purification systems, and specifically about the service of those systems and how it was being handled in the non-European foreign countries. It started out innocently enough, talking about how this network of service technicians had been set up, and blah, blah, blah. Then, all of a sudden, this guy (and we’ll call him BG here because those are his initials), flips the slide presentation, and on the screen is this buck naked woman weighing about 400 pounds with a tool belt around her body fixing a toilet. And there were probably six or seven of these types of slides in succession.

The room was out of control. There were all these frackin’ wild ass guys just roaring in the aisles of this hotel conference room, and the rest of us simply had our head in our hands. Of course, we were laughing too. We just did it more quietly. I laughed because that’s what we’d come to expect from BG. He was just plain crazy. And frankly, the guy who ran that division was a wild man. We’ll just call him PL. He was rolling in the aisles with the rest of the crew.

The images were from this thing called the “Bridget Calendar.” You can’t even find these images anywhere on line now. I’ve tried more than once so that I could include it in this post. I’ve searched for them in a million different ways. No dice. However, I did find an interview with the woman who actually posed for these calendars and it’s pretty interesting so I’m including it in this narrative so that you can see it really was a big deal in the 70s. The first time I ever saw these things was at a novelty store called Spencer’s Gifts, an establishment that still exists, by the way. The stuff they sell may have changed over the years, but you can still find some pretty tacky items there.

My big, fat close call

Like I said, specific time frames are tough all these years later. However, my career at Millipore spanned many years, and the company was always in reorganization mode. If you had a problem accepting change, Millipore was probably not the place to be. You’d need a therapist. First, they would divisionalize, then they would regroup divisions. Sometimes you wondered how the company managed to make money and grow the way it did. You just had to somehow believ there was a rhyme and reason to what the leadership was doing or you’d go crazy. However, I believe it was in 1978 that I received a layoff notice. The company wanted to roll the Intertech group into the larger International Division with its European counterparts. I was laid off for four hours. That was it. I was rescued by the domestic side of the business, specifically the Laboratory Products Division.

This division was the heart and soul of Millipore. It was how the company began in the 50s in the environmental business, believe it or not. When the Safe Drinking Water Act went into effect in the early 70s, Millipore disc filters were written right into the procedures. It may be old technology now, but it was groundbreaking back then. This would be the division where I would spend the majority of my Millipore career. Early on, it was still crazy times. The guy who picked me up was KL, the brother of the division manager who had just given me my layoff notice. The LPD was looking for a production manager. I was it. Again, I would be thrown into a situation where I’d have to hit the ground running and learn on the job.

This position would put me in charge of production for all the LPD promotional material, as well as the mail house. At the time, it was Copley Business Service just outside of North Station and on the edge of the North End of Boston.  We had our own in-house printing capability for one- and two-color jobs; four-color pieces were sent out for print. We used Acme Printing in Medford the majority of the time. We would eventually use Daniels Printing in Everett as well. I was in this slot for a long time and I learned a lot and became very adept at print buying. It was a loose atmosphere with pretty good leadership, and a judgement-free zone. That worked for me because I was in no mood to have to live in the closet. And I didn’t.

Eventually, the LPD would be taken over by a guy we’ll call TB (he subsequently spent many years at the helm of Sepracor and now sits on many boards), and I would begin to move back into the front-end of the communications business. My move back began when the LPD decided it needed to revamp and revitalize it’s public relations efforts, something that had fallen by the wayside. The division handed that task to me, and it was my opportunity and I knew it.  Things really took off from there and the best years of my Millipore life were about to begin.